Hacker News Reader

Comment by FreedomToCreate | Hacker News Reader

Do you have data to support this. Also is Afghanistan the lone producer of heroin? You have to be careful in making inferences like this without considering the multitude of other factors such as how easy has the process to create heroin become over the last decade, was there a drop in other drugs and why.

To your point however, I wonder if the war has enabled Big Phrama to get easier access to make there own opioids. To me it seems like the growth of Opioids for pain lead people to seek heroin and other drugs when there prescription runs out.

View on HN

I have no idea about causal relationships but there is at least some data on opium production.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium production jumped from 74,000 hectares in 2002 to 224,000 hectares in 2014, a ~200% increase. [0] (p. 12)

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium followed by Myanmar.

> Opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar and Lao PDR rose to 63,800 hectares (ha) in 2014 compared to 61,200 ha in 2013, increasing for the eighth consecutive year and nearly tripling the amount harvested in 2006. [1]

> In North America, although 90 per cent of the heroin in Canada originates in Afghanistan, the United States continues to be supplied by heroin manufactured in Central and South America. However, analysis of seizures indicates that while Afghan heroin currently accounts for relatively little of the heroin seized in the United States, this may be changing.

[0]: https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/...

[1]: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2014/December/opium-...

[2]: http://www.unodc.org/wdr2015/en/opiates.html

That's really strange that Canada gets most of its heroin from Afghanistan but America doesn't.

Differences in criminal supply chains are normal. In Canada it's mainly South Asian diaspora criminal networks who import heroin, so they source from India (Afghan heroin) as they have influence in India. US it's mainly Latino networks who import heroin and have influence in Mexico and Colombia to bribe police and dockworkers thus source from there.

data to support what? I didn't make any claims. It is widely reported that the Taliban banned growing poppy (it was un-islamic) in Afghanistan and since US forces put them on the run the local war lords, who help US forces with intel, etc., have overseen the massive rebirth of the industry.

It is also widely reported that there is a heroin epidemic in the United States. To me they must be somewhat related.

Considering that most of the US drugs are either made in the US, or come up from Mexico, I think blaming countries that are on the other side of the world separated by the largest oceans is a bit ridiculous.

http://opiophilia.blogspot.com/2013/05/heroin-in-united-stat...

US Heroin comes from South America and Mexico.

'Serving All Your Heroin Needs' | Apr 17, 2015 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/serving-all...

> Most of our heroin now comes not from Asia, but from Latin America, particularly Mexico, where poppies grow well in the mountains along the Pacific Coast. Mexican traffickers have focused on a rudimentary, less-processed form of heroin that can be smoked or injected. It is called black tar, which accurately describes its appearance. Cheaper to produce and ship than the stuff of decades past from Asia, heroin has fallen in price, and so more people have become addicted.

'How El Chapo Was Finally Captured, Again' | Jan 16, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/americas/mexico-el-c...

> [El Chapo] was, after all, a creator of the border tunnel, underground passages equipped with lighting, ventilation and mechanical carts to smuggle drugs into the United States without having to bother with the headache of evading customs agents. In total, Mr. Guzmán’s organization is estimated to have burrowed more than 90 such passages between Mexico and the United States.

'El Chapo Faces Array of Drug Charges in United States' | Jan 16, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/world/americas/extradition...

> Their joint indictment charged Mr. Guzmán and another suspected leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael Zambada García, with distributing more than 500 tons of cocaine in the United States since the late 1980s. It also charged them with distribution of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana. Prosecutors believe that the cartel may have been the biggest supplier of cocaine to the New York City area for a decade or longer. In their most recent indictment of Mr. Guzmán and Mr. García, prosecutors listed 163 separate counts of distribution of cocaine in the United States, ranging from 234 kilograms to as much as 23,000 kilos.

Just as a point of reference when you say "It is widely reported that ..." that is making a claim. You could follow that up with see here, here, and here. A useful one might be the NBC link (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/heroin-use-grows-u-s-poppy...)

That said, the article in question points out that overdoses are more closely related to the addition of Fentanyl which is 100x more powerful than Morphine [1] and that is not manufactured in Afghanistan.

[1] http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drug_chem_info/fentanyl.pd...

Actually, no, heroin from Afghanistan travels west to Russia and Eastern Europe and creates a lot of problems there as the prices have dropped significantly, so poor people are getting hooked on it, and then can't afford the habit. In US 96% of heroin comes from Latin America, mainly Mexico. You can check it on DEA or White house official sites, for instance https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/global-heroin-market

Reply on news.ycombinator.com